Parents learn to cope with loss of a child

Fred Sanchez doesn't think he will ever fully come to terms with why his son killed himself.

It doesn't matter how many times he revisits the moments leading up to Mitch's death or how much he researches mental illness — it never makes sense.

But that doesn't stop the Carmel Valley man from trying.

Since Mitch died 11 days before his 23rd birthday more than six years ago, Sanchez has written three self-published books about suicide and is working on a fourth.

It's his way of doing what many remaining family members try to do in the wake of a loved one's suicide: try to comprehend and then cope with it.

Sanchez is trying to put himself in his son's shoes, to understand what his son was thinking and feeling at the time, and why.

"My research became ... 'How do I explain what happens in the brain so at least I could do it? What would have to happen for me to do it?'"

Mitch's symptoms were not a mystery to Fred Sanchez and his wife, Pat Areias. Mitch was intelligent, athletic and well-liked by his peers, but he suffered from a mental illness — something his parents became aware of when he was in high school.

What Fred Sanchez seeks, through what has been exhaustive research, are the factors that caused the mental illness.

Sanchez, who has a degree in mechanical engineering and owns a silver jewelry business, explains in his books in great detail the brain's neurological processes and how, when those processes fail, it can lead to thoughts of suicide.

The path to suicide is complicated, Sanchez said. But essentially when mental functions — such as emotions, laughter and memory — get severely inhibited, it can lead to a loss of sense of self, Sanchez said.

Disrupted brain chemistry can take an afflicted person "to a spot you never imagined," Sanchez said. "(Suicide) becomes your only option and your only course of action. Or at least that's what you think."

Trying to manage heartache

The research is a somewhat cathartic process. It is Sanchez's method of managing his perpetual heartache.

Considering what he and his wife, along with their 31-year-old son, Fred Jr., have gone through, Sanchez said if his findings can help prevent future suicides, that would be a consoling bonus.

Along with Mitch, who went to Carmel Middle School and graduated from Stevenson School in 1998, nine other Carmel-area residents from the classes of 1995 to 2000 have committed suicide.

Dealing with the loss of a loved one is a long, painful process, said Gary Nakamura. Both his parents have died.

"But it's different when it's your son," he said. "Nothing compares to this."

Like Sanchez and Areias, Gary and Ranko Nakamura raised two sons in Carmel Valley. Their older son, Robbie, committed suicide in 1998, when he was 20 years old.

"Right after it happened, Gary was blaming himself, I was blaming himself," Ranko Nakamura said. "And I just looked at him and said, 'If we are going to make it, we can't blame ourselves and we can't blame each other." Even though I knew we would blame ourselves, but we wouldn't survive if we attacked each other."

While Mitch Sanchez's symptoms of mental illness first appeared when he was a young teen, Robbie Nakamura did not display such symptoms, at least not that his family and friends noticed.

"To this day we don't know why he did it," Ranko Nakamura said. "It drove us crazy trying to figure it out."

A decade later, the hurt has not gone away nor will it ever, the Nakamuras said.

"I know he had no idea what it would do to us," Ranko Nakamura said. "He was not in the frame of mind to be thinking of that. I always thought that if (those contemplating suicide) thought about what it does to their family, they would never do it. But they get to a point where they just don't think about anything else."

The Nakamuras have managed to continue on, in large part because of a sense of obligation to their younger son, Jeff, who is now 28.

"Time helps," Ranko Nakamura said. "The grief just becomes a part of you and you learn to live with it."

Suicide support group

Tremendous family and community support helped their family get through the tragedy, the Nakamuras said. They benefitted from the suicide support group they attended for several months after their son's death.

The group, which meets twice a month, is run by Lisa Baron of Seaside. Her son, Dylan, ended his life a few months after graduating from Monterey High School in 1998.

"I want to be here for others because others were here for me," Baron said.

During the group meetings, members talk about how they are coping with their losses, what they have been thinking about since the last meeting and how far they have come since the suicides ripped apart their lives.

They recount the suicidal signs they failed pick up on. They talk about how suicide tears apart families and about never-healing pain of the loss, no matter how much time has passed. Some say they gravitated toward religion after losing a loved one, while others say God let them down.

Virginia, a group member who requested that her last name not be used, lost her 19-year-old son to suicide.

"I didn't know how deep and dark I was supposed to be," she said in a meeting last year.

One member of the group said dealing with a suicide is different than dealing with deaths caused by disease or even violence. Those give you something or someone else to blame. There's no such option with suicide.

Surviving family members often take responsibility for the loss of their loved ones. But group discussion alleviates some of the self-blame because "it removes it from the emotional realm and rationalizes the suicide," Baron said.

To rationalize the suicide, one must understand the source of the dead person's misery and that mental illness can be a strong enough force to make life seem unbearable.

Rationalizing a suicide is not about justifying it or disassociating from it. It's about the survivors doing their best to move on with their lives, knowing life will never be the same, Baron said.